"This is my truth"

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Corkey

I think with sciences not being taught in schools we are going to experience more of this. I'm even more concerned with the kids being home schooled.
My internal truths are different from everyone else's, however the earth is not flat, the sun does not revolve around the earth and we did not just appear in this form 6,000 years ago. Science is not a god, but it can reveal many truths that mankind needs to see and hear. I think mans ego get in the way of real scientific truth.

Your next to last sentence really illustrates what I try to communicate about science, its power and its beauty. I think science gives us a ground for what I call the least common point of agreement. By that, I mean that despite whatever differences we bring to the table we can all agree that, for instance, Earth has one moon and that gravity holds the two bodies together. We can agree that the very same force that holds the Earth-Moon system together causes that system to orbit the Sun. We can agree that the very same force that causes all of that orbiting round gravitational centers of mass holds you to the chair you're sitting in and reading these words. It doesn't matter that you are Native American and I am Black, the same force effects us both. It doesn't matter if I am conservative or you are liberal or vice versa, Newtonian physics effects us the same way.

While these might seem really trivial they are not as trivial as might be revealed on first glance. The reason why is that the same general methods of thought that allow us to understand why the Earth-Moon system works allows us to *also* realize that you and I are members of the same species. Regardless of how easily we fall into the mental habits of xenophobia, racism--just a special case of xenophobia--will find no quarter in biology. Even if it did, we can reason our way past whatever haven it might offer--however, again, biology offers no harbor for racist ideas.

In our modern society we focus on the differences yet, despite those places we differ, we live in the same physical world, we are subject to the same physical forces. Climate change will not effect just people in Europe while leaving people in South America unscathed. Starvation kills people in China just as easily as it does people in Somalia.

This is not to say that science can give us a moral system per se. I think the life sciences (and here I'll include psychology as it moves more toward grounding its hypothesis in the biology of the brain) can point us toward a common human nature which can provide us with guideposts for what kinds of societies we *can* build and how easy or difficult it will be to create those societies.

Cheers
Aj